


hold back from the fickle dawn

by nebulia



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: A cat - Freeform, A sliver of hope, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd-centric, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Mild Gore, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Timestamp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 17:42:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29845131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebulia/pseuds/nebulia
Summary: [He has not been particularly friendly to the monastery animals since his return, and they give each other wide berths. They recognize that he is a monster, predatory and dangerous, but that they are not prey unless they provoke him.]
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	hold back from the fickle dawn

**Author's Note:**

> Timestamp is mid-Ethereal Moon, 1185.
> 
> Actually part of a larger fic that i don't know if I'll ever manage to finish (though i'd like to, and if i do i'll probably delete this). It stands alone as a scene, though, one I'm proud of, and i've been sitting on it for months. 
> 
> cw for a semi-graphic depiction of animal birth, hallucinations (Glenn), and a what's probably a heavy-handed metaphor

Once he is settled in the monastery, he goes until he can no longer. He's awake for days fighting with the living and the dead until he collapses from exhaustion, wrapped in his cloak and tucked into a corner of the Goddess Tower. He does not know how much time passes like this; the days awake melt together into a sludge of gray and blood as he cuts his way through the infestations of bandits and the incursions of Imperials. Winter moves in colder and darker, and when he’s finally forced to sleep the exhaustion is so profound and so littered with nightmares that he never knows how long he sleeps for. Not that time means much of anything. 

He awakens in the darkest, coldest part of winter to find something strange has tucked itself into his cloak; pressed itself, small and warm, against his side. When he lifts the cloak, what he sees is one of the monastery cats, one that cannot be much more than a kitten herself. Three tiny kittens are tucked against her belly, mewling, as she strains to birth another. He is probably the warmest thing in miles, and while he never knows exactly how much he sleeps, he knows on occasion it has to be for quite some time. Long enough, at least, for the cat to decide he was a safe, warm, secret place to give birth. 

He stares at the cat, unsure of what to do. He has never been good with delicate things, and most cats require more nuanced a touch than his cruel hands can provide. Animals shy from him; horses skitter away, dogs bare their teeth. Even carrion birds avoid him, rotting though he may be. He has not been particularly friendly to the monastery animals since his return, and they give each other wide berths. They recognize that he is a monster, predatory and dangerous, but that they are not prey unless they provoke him. They were never true pets, anyway--dogs and cats alike came and went as they pleased, and while they had names, only a few people knew all of them. He had never been like Ashe or the professor in that way. 

Perhaps this is some hallucination, though if so, it’s strange that there is no more blood or viscera than a cat giving birth should have. The cat’s face and body is whole, and her babies look like regular kittens. He can feel them, warm against his side. None of that means anything, since most things feel real regardless if they are or not. Even now Glenn sits at the top of the steps, watching him with open, skeletal scorn, his breaths making puffs of fog in the air. His blood, steaming as it pours from holes in his chest and throat, drips off one stair onto the next at a steady tempo. Glenn is as real as ghosts are, but the blood? He’s not sure. 

The cat puffs for breath and the fourth kitten slides out. It moves weakly in its sac, which hasn’t broken. The mother cat tries to reach for it, licking its face, fussing, but the kitten goes still, the sac still over its nose and mouth. 

Dimitri barely breathes. 

The mother cat tips her head up to him and meows, plaintive. She nudges her head at the kitten, and meows again. 

He is large and his hands are not meant for delicate tasks. He is as liable to crush the kitten as he is to save it. And yet this cat, barely older than a kitten herself, has decided he is the safe place where she should give birth. Has asked him to help her. 

He does not pick up the kitten. He braces its body--barely longer than the length of his fingers--as gently as he knows how against the cat’s back legs and it wriggles slightly against him, still alive. He pulls his other hand’s gauntlet off with his teeth, metal grating in his mouth, and reaches out with one grubby finger, fingernail ragged and bruise-blackened, and pulls at the sac until it breaks, using the pad of his thumb to clear it from the kitten’s nose and mouth. The kitten wriggles again, breathing, and then mewls as noisily as its siblings. The mother cat pulls it into her and begins to clean the rest of the sac away before it bellycrawls to a nipple. She meows at the kittens, or maybe Dimitri, again, softer, and then purrs until she falls asleep.

He does not dare move for a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> title from only skin by joanna newsom
> 
> you can find me on twitter @coaIsack and my carrd is nebulia.carrd.co!
> 
> i will do my best to reply to all comments!


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